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VW return for Team HARD

Team HARD will run Volkswagen CCs in the 2017 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship after securing a deal to purchase three of the race-winning machines.

The Kent-based squad originally built, prepared and ran the cars in the BTCC back in 2013, taking a double podium at Thruxton in only the third event of the season. After taking a sabbatical from the series during the following year, the VWs have since been run by Team BMR and more recently BKR.

Team Principal, Tony Gilham, is delighted to be re-united with the cars and believes they’ll be a force to be reckoned with after a planned upgrade to RML specification.

“Bringing the VWs to the BTCC was our brainchild back in 2011, so it feels like we have some unfinished business with them,” he said. “It was a good car out of the box then and was still winning races last season with the older kit onboard. Now we plan to update all three VWs to the RML-spec over the winter and believe we’ll have a really strong package.

“We’re coming off the back of a solid year with three older cars, but now we feel we’re ready to step up and become extremely competitive.

“A number of our staff were also part of the original build project so of course there is a strong bond too. We looked at many options, however, and made this call because we believe they’ll be race-winning machines in our hands. To potentially build and develop new cars at the same time as carrying out the RML upgrades would have been a massive task.

“We’ve already signed one driver, which will be announced in due course, and we’re speaking to further interested parties over the coming weeks in relation to the two vacant seats. It’s great for Team HARD to have secured this deal so early in the winter as it gives us the time required to prepare properly for what I’m sure will be another exciting and successful season ahead for us.”